Free Republic

It is in the personal realm that Garrow’s account is particularly revealing. He shares for the first time the story of a woman Obama lived with and loved in Chicago, in the years before he met Michelle, and whom he asked to marry him. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College, is a recurring presence in “Rising Star,” and her pained, drawn-out relationship with Obama informs both his will to rise in politics and the trade-offs he deems necessary... Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., concludes this massive new work...

Barack Obama seriously dated several women before meeting Michelle, and none of them were African-American, according to the author of one of the definitive books about the former president. Christopher Andersen, who wrote "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," appeared on "TMZ Live" just after excerpts from another book -- "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama" -- were released, saying he twice proposed to a woman before meeting Michelle. Andersen says Obama, who had big political aspirations early on, recognized the value of marrying a black woman, although he's quick to add the love between Barack and...

Click here to find out more! When asked about the significance of her daughter, Chelsea, marrying Marc Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, and thus being married in an interfaith union, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded, “Over the years, so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married, crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity have just disappeared.” True, the barriers have disappeared, but serious difficulties remain. While some scholars argue that mixed-faith unions “serve as a refiner’s fire” that make the relationships stronger, the statistical evidence indicates this is all too frequently not the outcome. The American...